Sheet item alignment device for sheet handling system



June 25, 1968 c. B. ALBRIGHT SHEET ITEM ALIGNMENT DEVICE FOR SHEET HANDLING SYSTEM 2 Sheets-Sheet 1 Filed Aug. 4. 1966 FIG. 1

FIG. 3

INVENTOR CHARLES BARTON ALBRIGHT ATTORNEY SHEET ITEM ALIGNMENT DEVICE FOR SHEET HANDLING SYSTEM 2 Sheets-Sheet 2 Filed Aug. 4. 1966 FIG. 2

c rm 5 7 5 3 55 Q I l I l i l|ll+ o o o o HwHv fiHO United States Patent 3,389,904 SHEET ITEM ALIGNMENT DEVICE FOR SHEET HANDLING SYSTEM Charles Barton Albright, Norristown, Pa., assignor to Sperry Rand Corporation, New York, N.Y., a corporation of Delaware Filed Aug. 4, 1966, Ser. No. 570,303 6 Claims. (Cl. 271-52) ABSTRACT OF THE DISCLOSURE The present device provides a plurality of rotatable wheels fitted along one side of a fluid transport passageway. Elements upon which data are recorded are transported along this passageway and into the area, or station, wherein the rotatable elements are located. The data bearing elements are shifted to come in tangential contact with the rotatable elements. Accordingly, the data bearing elements are aligned so that they can be transported under a read head.

This invention relates to a sheet handling device which employs an all-fluid transport technique. More particularly, this invention relates to an alignment device which is used to align unit record items in the course of their movement in order that such items may be detected or read at a detection or reading station.

In the vast majority of sheet handling devices such as punch card systems or magnetic ink check reading devices, it is necessary to arrange for the document which is to be read to be placed in registration with respect to the reading head. If the foregoing arrangement is not provided, then there is a high likelihood that the information on the document may pass through the reading head in such a position that the reading head cannot properly read the information therefrom. The present invention deals with a device for directing unit records, or sheet means, into a predetermined position in order that these unit records might pass through a sensing station or reading station in proper registration or alignment with the necessary detection elements thereof.

In accordance with the present invention, there is provided a pluraliy of turbine wheels which are fitted on one side of a unit record transport passageway. In the system with which the present invention has been primarily used, the medium by which the unit records are carried along is a stream of air; and accordingly the turbine wheels are arranged to be propelled by the air flow of the system.

In accordance with another feature of the present invention, the turbine wheels are disposed in a negative pressure chamber in order that the air which is flowing in the main transport passageway will be sucked into the negative pressure chamber through the rotating turbine wheels. In other words, the turbine wheels intercept the air flow as it passes from the main transportation path into the negative pressure chamber.

In accordance with another feature of the present invention, the turbine wheels have a middle section which is smooth and which is disposed to come in tangential contact with the documents or sheet members being transported through the main transport passageway.

The present invention can be better understood by considering the following figures in which:

FIGURE 1 is a schematic and partially broken away pictorial of the overall system with which the present invention is used.

FIGURE 2 is a broken away pictorial showing a plurality of the turbine wheels in the alignment station and their relationship to the holes which produce the air jets in the document transport passageway.

3,389,904 Patented June 25, 1968 FIGURE 3 is a schematic pictorial showing one turbine wheel and its relationship to the document transport passageway along with a document being passed therethrough.

The present invention relates to an alignment station of a sheet handling system which employs an all fluid transport technique and which system is described to some extent in my co-pending applications, All Fluid Unit Record Accelerator, Ser. No. 570,312, filed Aug. 4, 1966, and Sheet Separator, Ser. No. 570,299, filed Aug. 4, 1966. In order to have an overall understanding of the role that the present invention plays in the above-mentioned sheet handling device, examine FIGURE 1 which is a schematic of such an overall device. It should be noted that while the present invention may be used with sheet handling mechanisms, or document handling mechanisms, the present invention is herein described as a unit record handling device.

In FIGURE 1 there is shown a unit record magazine 11. The unit records 13 are pushed upwardly through the magazine 11 by a lifting plate 15. The lifting plate 15 is driven by shaft 17 which in turn is moved upward by a suitable mechanism 19. The suitable mechanism 19 may be a cam-driven device or a worm screw device, etc. which in effect will cause the lift plate 15 to provide a constant movement of the unit record documents 13 toward the upper portion of the magazine 11.

At the upper extremity of the magazine 11, there is found a separator mechanism 21 which is composed of a pressure head 23 and a hollow tube 25. In addition, at the upper extremity of the magazine 11 there is provided a preseparator device 27 which is actually U-shaped and fits around the a magazine 11 as described in my abovementioned co-pending applications.

The preseparator 27 has air, under pressure, fed thereto through the inlet tube 29. In the preseparator device 27 there are apertures in the rearward wall 31 and in the two side walls, neither of which side walls are shown in FIGURE 1. The air which emanates from these last-mentioned apertures riflles the upper positioned unit documents and helps in the separation thereof.

From the pressure head 23 there emanates a jet of air in a downward vertical direction normal to the plane of the unit record, which is supplied through the tube 25 from a suitable air pressure source (not shown). As this air from the pressure head 23 strikes the topmost unit record, it creates a differential of pressure as it experiences a radial excursion. The differenital of pressure thus created is not sufficient to lift the top unit record until the lifting plate 15 moves the entire stack to a position where the static pressure of the vertical jet is instantaneously converted into velocity pressure. At that physical point, the top unit record is snapped up toward the pressure head 23 to come to a state of equilibrium a few thousandths of an inch below the pressure head 23.

As can be seen in FIGURE 1, the stack is inclined toward transport mechanism 33. Accordingly, the top unit record 35 will be urged by the forces of gravity towards the entrance of the accelerator 37.

Within the accelerator 37, as more fully described in by above-mentioned co-pending applications, there is provided a number of angularly disposed holes which provide jets of air (having a forward component of force) into the passageway 39. Since the jets of air are projected into said passageway at an angle, there is provided a component of force which will move a document being fed therethrough in a forward direction. Because these jets of air are projected in a forward sense into the passageway 39 and the entrance to the accelerator opens into the surrounding atmosphere, there is a differential of pressure created between the pressure in the passageway and the ambient pressure around the entrance to the accelerator. The diiferential pressure between the pressure in the passageway and the ambient pressure around the entrance of the accelerator is further increased by the use of suction holes (4b) in the side (vertical) walls of the passageway entrance area. Accordingly, there is a second force urging the top unit record into the accelerator. Finally, the air stream from the preseparator 27 which is transmitted through the back wall 31 aids in urging the top unit record into the entrance of the ac celerator 37.

It suffices to say for the purpose of this discussion that in the accelerator 37 the unit record is moved along by mass air flow created by incrementally spaced propulsion jet streams. The incrementally spaced jet streams are provided by the angularly located holes such as holes 41 as can be seen in FIGURE 2. In addition, there is a set of jets, directed normal to the plane of the unit records, provided by the holes 43, as also can be seen in FIGURE 2. The air pressure which is applied to the propulsion jets is greater by a factor of about five to one than the air pressure applied to the vertically directed jets (ie., air bearing jets).

The vertically directed jets act as an air bearing upon which the unit record is cushioned during its excursion. The forward component of force of the propulsion jets passing through the holes 41 propels a unit record toward the top of the figure (as defined by FIGURE 2). Considering FIGURE 2 further, it should be understood that in the accelerator station on either side of the transport passageway 19, there are provided two plenum chambers each of which has developed therein a negative pressure. Accordingly, as the air emanates from the holes 41 and 43 it is sucked from the transport passageway 39 into the plenum chambers 47 and 47 through holes 46.

As the unit record is transported by mass air flow into the alignment station 49, the document experiences a movement to one side, in particular in FIGURE 2 to the right-hand side of the figure. The foregoing is true because there is not provided in the alignment station a chamber analogous to the chamber and hence there is no pressure either positive of negative exerted along the left-hand wall 51. In the chamber 53 of the alignment station there is a negative pressure developed so that the air which leaves the holes 41 and 43 is swept or sucked into this negative pressure chamber 53. As the air passes into the negative pressure chamber 53, it is caught by the pockets of the turbine wheels 55 (including turbine wheels 55a, 55b and 550). Accordingly, the turbine wheels rotate as depicted in a clock-wise direction and simply come in contact with the document at tangential points, as the document is moved along the transport passageway 19. Since the same air pressure and air flow which transports the document is also the moving force to rotate the turbine wheels 55 it follows intuitively and has been found empirically that the turbine wheels 55 rotate at approximately the same speed as the documents being passed therethrough.

The documents actually come in contact with the smooth part 57 of the turbine wheel, which can be better seen in FIGURE 3.

In FIGURE 3 it will be noted that the pocket blades 59 are disposed above and below the transport passageway 39. The smooth portion of the transport wheel 57 lies adjacent to the main passageway 39 so that a document such as document 59 comes in contact with only the smooth portion 57 at a tangential point 63 as the document is transported through the passageway 39. Also, in FIGURE 3 there is shown for purpose of relative association the angular hole 41 and some of the perpendicular holes 43. Partially shown in FIGURE 3 is an upper chamber 65 which is a chamber having air under pressure and accordingly forces air through the angular hole 41 to provide the angular jet described earlier. On the lower portion of the figure there is shown part of a chamber 67 which has air under pressure and accordingly provides the perpendicular jets through the perpendicular holes 43. In the chamber 53 there is developed a negative pressure as indicated earlier and accordingly the air flow will be from the chambers 65 and 67 through their respective jet forming holes into the passageway 39, through the narrow chamber 69 at which point the air is trapped by the cups of the vanes 59. The air trapped by the cups of the vanes 59 accordingly cause the turbine wheel to rotate as the air attempts to be passed into the negative pressure chamber 53.

It will be noted that in FIGURE 2 the upper edge of any particular turbine wheel is rotating in a direction which is opposite from the next adjacent upward wheel. For instance, consider the two wheels 55A and 558. As air is pushed from the transport passageway 39 into the negative pressure chamber 53 each of the turbine wheels 55A and 55B is rotated in a clockwise direction.

However, the vanes of wheel 55B, which appear toward the lower section of FIGURE 2, will be pushing into this air flow and hence there will be some force tending to rotate the wheel 55B in a counter-clockwise direction. Because of the shape of the vanes and the air pressures employed in the preferred embodiment, the major force on the turbine wheels is the kinetic energy of the air that is trapped in the pockets of the vanes. While it is true that there is a certain impinging force against the back of the vanes which are rotating on the lower side of the wheel 55B, the back of the vanes which comes in contact with this air flow serve to reflect the air flow therefrom toward the open ended vanes of the wheel 55A. Hence, there is an additional bit of kinetic energy further operating on the pockets of the wheel 55A. Empirically, it has been found that the component of force tending to cause the wheel 55B to rotate in a counter-clockwise direction is negligible, and therefore with the design of the wheel as shown the wheels rotate at substantially the same speed as a unit record which is carried through the passageway 39.

In the preferred embodiments, the vanes are at 22 /2 circular pitch; there are 16 vanes per wheel, the base diameter is .606" and the outside diameter is .750". Ohviously, these dimensions can be changed for other pressure considerations and other unit record dimensions, etc.

It becomes apparent then that a unit record is moved from the accelerator into the alignment chamber and accordingly to one side of the alignment chamber. By having the edges of a document move along the rollers of the alignment chamber the data on the document will be aligned with the read head or detection apparatus of the next station. It is apparent that such alignment is necessary in order to read the data.

The embodiments of the invention in which an exclusive property or privilege is claimed are defined as follows:

1. In a sheet item processing system which employs an all fluid technique, a device to align sheet items being processed comprising:

(a) air pressure means;

(b) air exhaust means;

(c) mass air fiow means having a passageway with an upper wall, a lower wall, and first and second side walls, said upper wall having means to generate angularly directed jets of air and connected to said air pressure means, said lower wall having means to generate jets of air and connected to said air pressure means, said second side wall having means to exhaust air from said passageway and connected to said air exhaust means, said means to generate jets of air and said means to exhaust air operating together to move sheet items through said passageway while moving them along said second side wall; and

(d) a plurality of rotatable means disposed along said second side wall and formed to be placed in rotation by air passing into said exhaust means so that when said sheet items are moved through said passageway along said second side wall they come in tangential contact with said rotatable means.

2. In a sheet item processing system which employs an all fluid technique, a device to align sheet item according to claim 1 wherein said rotatable means are turbines having vane-like structures forming pockets therebetween which catch air as it travels from said passageway to said air exhaust means thereby causing said turbines to rotate at a speed that is commensurate with a sheet item being moved through said passageway.

3. In a sheet item processing system which employs an all fluid technique, a device to align sheet items according to claim 3 wherein said vane-like structures are disposed along the upper and lower portions of said turbine means and wherein the portions of each of said turbines between said upper and lower vane-like structures is formed to provide a solid circumferential surface.

4. In a sheet item processing system which employs an all fluid technique, a device to align sheet items according to claim 2 wherein said vane-like structures are disposed angularly so that air being exhausted against the rotation of said turbines is deflected from the backs of said vanelike structures into pockets of an adjacent turbine means to thereby further drive said last mentioned turbine means.

5. In a sheet item processing system which employs an all fluid technique, a device to align sheet items according to claim 1 wherein said means to generate angularly directed jets of air comprises a plurality of angularly formed apertures in said upper wall which are connected to said air pressure means and open into said passageway.

6. In a sheet item processing system which employs an all fluid technique, a device to align sheet items according to claim 1 wherein said means to generate jets of air associated with said lower wall comprises a plurality of vertically disposed apertures through said lower wall being connected tosaid air pressure means and opening into said passageway.

References Cited UNITED STATES PATENTS 1,947,211 2/ 1934 McFarlane 271-74 3,223,499 12/1965 Cypher 214-1 3,231,165 1/1966 Wallin 30229 RICHARD E. AEGERTER, Primary Examiner. 

